Thank you! I am downloading QGIS right now and I will comment back on the results!
– ZebsMar 4 '11 at 20:19

It was very easy copying to a text editor. My complementary question is how to convert the points to lat,long infomration?
– ZebsMar 4 '11 at 21:07

2

Open the original shapefile. Right-click it in the legend and selecct "Save as ...". Chose a target file name and coordinate system EPSG:4326 (WGS84). Load that new shapefile. Now you can get lat/lon coordinates.
– underdark♦Mar 4 '11 at 22:35

Thanks, do you know how I can convert the X, Y values to lon/lat. I undertand that I need the projection but I can get that from the shapefile right?
– ZebsMar 4 '11 at 22:35

@zebs Yes, I do know; no, you can't do it the way you think. The shapefile contains coordinates and attributes only; no metadata. Sometimes the projection information appears in a .prj file (sharing the base name of the shapefile). If not, then you just gotta know. (The data provider should tell you.) You need GIS software, or the equivalent, to unproject the coordinates. This means converting the shapefile within the GIS into another shapefile (or the equivalent) and then exporting its new coordinates.
– whuber♦Mar 4 '11 at 22:54

Below is a way to access ESRI shapefile latitude and longitude coordinates, among other bits of information such as, spatial reference, field attributes, field values, etc., using Python. The code below only works for polygons and points (because I haven't gotten around to writing the code for polylines). I basically cobbled together some code I found scattered around the ArcGIS Desktop Help 9.3, added some of my own and put it together in one function. It is was written with ArcGIS 9.3. You should be able to pass in a polygon shapefile or point shapefile and the logic will direct it accordingly.